Visual Programming

C# is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language derived from C and C++. C# (pronounced "C sharp") is firmly planted in the C and C++ family tree of languages, and will immediately be familiar to C and C++ programmers. C# aims at combining the high productivity of Visual Basic and the raw power of C++.

It is shipped as a part of Microsoft Visual Studio 7.0. In addition to C#, Visual Studio supports Visual Basic, Visual C++, and the scripting languages VBScript and JScript. All of these languages provide access to the Next Generation Windows Services (NWGS) platform, which includes a common execution engine and a rich class library targeted towards Internet programming. This platform, also known as .NET (pronounced "dot net"), will play an outstanding role in the near "mobile future."

The .NET software development kit defines a "Common Language Subset" (CLS), a sort of lingua franca that ensures seamless interoperability between CLS-compliant languages and class libraries. For C# developers, this means that even though C# is a new language, it has complete access to the same rich class libraries that are used by seasoned tools such as Visual Basic and Visual C++. C# itself does not include a class library.

This introductory course aims at:

• Learning the C# language
• Learning how to develop visual desktop applications using C#
• Learning how to develop visual Internet applications using C#

Rafael Corchuelo comes from the University of Seville, in Southern Spain. He is a Doctor of Computer Science and he has been with the Department of Computer Languages and Systems since 1994. Currently, he teaches two undergraduate courses on language processors and visual programming, and a graduate course on "componentware."

His main research topic is distributed systems, and he has written over forty papers on them. He also leads the research group on distributed systems of the University of Seville, which has participated in several official projects set up by the Spanish Administration, as well as several international excellence networks. He has served as a reviewer for some special issues of Communications of the ACM, and he is currently a reviewer of the ACM Computing Reviews Journal.